USTA 8.0 Mixed Doubles Final Set

The USTA Eastern Region Northern District Final is all set for February 9th as the top two seeds both advanced. Nick Ltaif’s top seeded team took out the defending District and Sectional champs, Jim Cary’s team 2-1, while Jen Hahn’s team had all they could handle, defeating Angela Case’s team 2-1, with all three matches going to a 3rd set 10-point Tie-breaker. The Finals should be a good matchup as I am interested to see who each team will bring and how they set their lineup. Take the poll below and tell us who you think will win. Below are the scores from this past weekend’s semifinal matches:

7 Responses

Seems a bit of a stretch to describe the current Cary team as the “…defending District and Sectional champs, Jim Cary’s team”. That previous/2012 team journeyed to Nationals last November, and subsequently players had to split up. As per USTA rules, only 3 players from that team is on Cary’s current/2013 roster.

I agree with SR. Technically, the “cary” team is defending champs, but SR is correct that our team had to break up mid season. That being said, we still had a solid team, and gave Ltaif’s team a good run. Ltaif’s team is very deep with good 4.0 players, and look well balanced. I think they will take the league championship.

As I recall, the Cary team had its original members start out the season playing, however as many players know in the area, if a team wins sectionals and advances to Nationals, that team has to break up, and as you said, only a maximum of three players can stay on that team for the following season. I am not sure if there was a miscommunication on the USTA or team part, but most that play in leagues are well aware of this rule. For Cary to field a team, yes they are “defending” champs even though the roster had changed for this year, its like any other sport. The only question I have is why the entire team was put together, knowing full well that the team had to break up after going to Nationals last year? That created an awkward situation during the season where the team had to forfeit matches after the fact and the captain was allowed to pick and choose what players were to remain – thus impacting matches that were already played.

I looked at Cary’s match record on the USTA website. Only 1 match had to be defaulted because there were ineligible players? Hard to tell. From what I understand of the situation, Cary only asked a few to come back. Most of the team was *not* on the team ‘put together’. Some were rated up in the ‘final’ NTRP list, which came as a surprise; Cary got rated up too. Seems only two players remain from the team that went to Tucson (Fahr & Axford).
But as Mr. Bain said, seems the current team was still competitive. Ltaif would be favored to prevail in the final since they defeated the ‘defending champs’.

I never knew they had that rule for mixed doubles, since there was no ‘Nationals’ for many years. Local teams in the 9.0 that went past sectionals (Bain, Brahler), never had to split up, I’m guessing since we/they advanced to something like a Regionals (Virginia, Puerto Rico), that was not considered ‘Nationals’. Sherwin, do you know when the usta started offering mixed National Championships?

The TU Tennis Blog responds :
Tom and SR,
All USTA Leagues that have a National Championship requires all teams that qualify to break up and keep only three players for the upcoming season. The reason it may sound new to you is that historically our region does not fare well at Sectionals, thus rarely getting an opportunity to advance to Sectionals. As for defaults, the captain should have been aware of this rule for the upcoming season. I heard from several players and captains and thought it was a situation that could have been avoided. Ultimately it falls on the captain to know the rules of league play.

I checked the USTA site. It looks like they have had official mixed national championships starting in 2009. Before that the ‘National’ championships didnt require teams to split up the following year. So it has been in effect for 4 years, which seems like enough time for word to get out to local captains. I’ve been a captain in mixed for 12 years or so and I didnt hear that mixed started that so I guess there are a few of us captains in the dark. Jim Cary is a very experienced captain so it is a little surprizing. It only really overturned one team match, so it didnt change much in the league. Maybe our seed in the league playoffs wouldve been higher, so we couldve played a different team instead of Ltaif.

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